Month: March 2009

Fun. Whimsical. Cheerful. Lovey. All of these words come to mind when I think of KITTY DESIGNS. I was first introduced to Kitty Chen and her designs when she was a guest designer at Scrapbook Graphics. I love her fun and playful designs and I was thrilled when she agreed to be part of this months sponsoring designers. I can’t wait to show you all of the fun things she has made. I have had fun being stretched and scrapping outside my normal style using her whimsical creations. Look what she made exclusively for THE DIGI FILES 3!

Isn’t it SO cute? It just makes me smile looking at it! You can get it plus a whole lot more for just $5.00. Don’t miss it! Here is a page I made with it! Now I just need to find a need for those bees because they are so stinkin’ cute!

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My name is Kitty Chen. I was born in Indonesia and am now living in the capital city of Indonesia, Jakarta.
I am a mom to Joeruel who will be 3 years old in April. My husband, Ricks, is a graphic and web designer.
We (even my son) really love arts and we enjoy everything that related to art and music.

I was scrapping pages for my son every day. I started to think that maybe it would be more special to scrap using my own designs. Over time, I began to love designing more and more.

I started selling in early March 2008.
I was at We are Storytellers at that time. I learned a lot from being there. After that I moved to Oscraps, where I have been since June.

Both! My principle is that if I provide things for people to scrap their memories, I need to scrap my own memories and keep telling stories with my pages.

I do this full-time and it pays my bills. So I don’t have any average work hours for this. I work any and every time I can — days, nights, even on holidays. I do try to spend as little time as possible working on the weekends.

That’s all. I have few little things that bug me of course, but I don’t really care/complain.

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Now that we have gotten a little peek into Kitty’s life, let’s see some more of her fun designs! (all images are clickable). I love the variety that she has…kits, element sets, templates, quick pages, and even commercial use products!

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And here are some GORGEOUS layouts made with some of Kitty’s products

Thanks so much, Kitty, for being with us this month at THE DAILY DIGI. We love your designs and can’t wait to see what you come up with next!

We are so excited to have a guest with us today — Kimberly Lund. She is known around the digi world as MISS KIM and she has been around for as long as I can remember. We have served on creative teams together and she was on my creative team for a while. She is super sweet and super talented! You can see her gallery HERE and her blog HERE.

I was wasting spending time on Facebook a few weeks ago and came across some really photo mosaics that Kim had made. I wrote her and told her how cool I thought they were and asked if she would like to be a guest here at THE DAILY DIGI. She said yes and I am so excited to bring you her really cool article on making REALLY cool photo mosaics! Here we go….

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Like many digital scrapbookers, I enjoy creating albums of the big events in our lives; vacations are so important to my family and since I started scrapbooking I’ve created some form of vacation album each year. However, I can’t hang an album on the wall, and sometimes I want to create a photo keepsake that will allow me to remember an entire trip.

I was so delighted to find AndreaMosaic. It is a free download that allows you to create multiphoto mosaics out of any photo you’d like. If you like the program and want to donate at least $38, the creator will also send you the Professional version of the software. The website for the software is full of tutorials and information to help you customize a mosaic to create your own photo keepsake.

Once you open the program, the first thing you will need to do is create a database file of photos that you want used in your mosaic creation. For my first project, I copied and pasted the photos I wanted to use into a new folder on my hard drive, and had AndreaMosaic create the database from that folder. Later, as I grew more familiar with the program and wanted to use multiple folders of photos, such as vacation photos, I found it less time consuming to just point AndreaMosaic at the folders I wanted it to use to create the database. Again, the website tutorials have much more detailed information on creating databases.

After your database is created and saved to your computer, the fun starts. First, you can choose the base photo that you want to be turned into a mosaic. I’ve found that you can safely use low quality images from the web for your base photo. Since you’re going to be recreating the base photo with miniatures of your own high quality photos, the quality of the base photo doesn’t seem to be as important.

After choosing your base photo, you get to tweak all your settings. There is a drop-down menu to choose the size of your mosaic. I usually go big here because I know it will resize well.

Next, choose how many tiles you want in your mosaic. I’ve found that the more tiles, the better the mosaic looks. You can also decide how many times you want a particular photo to be reused, if you want to allow the program to flip or rotate your photos in order for them to fit, how many tiles should separate duplicate photos, and how much you will allow the program to colorize your photos.

I’ve chosen to allow the AndreaMosaic program a lot of room for error in creating my mosaics. My goal is to have a large framed mosaic to hang on my wall that will allow me to remember a whole trip at a glance, so I don’t mind flipped and colorized photos. For others, they may want the program to stick with original photos as much as possible. I love that the program gives me the flexibility to make those choices.

Here’s a few mosaics that I recently created with our photos. For one, I used our recent family photos, for another I used photos from our 2007 Disney trip. Finally, I created a mosaic using the logo of my favorite Branson show. I had it printed and took it with me over Spring Break when we went to see the show. I had all the family members sign the mosaic and framed it to hang above my computer area.

The possibilities are endless… a mosaic of baby’s first year, a mosaic to be featured at a senior’s graduation party, or a mosaic of photos from the wedding couple’s courtship. Let your creativity shine.

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Thank you SO MUCH Kim for sharing this really cool idea with us! There are really so many possibilities…so cool to think about!

P.S. Just wanted to let you know…one downside of this program is that right now it is just for Windows. If you use a Mac and run parallels, you can still use it. However, they do link to a program called MacOSaiX that will make Mosaics with a Mac. I tried it and it works great (though I do recommend starting it when you are going to bed….it takes a while!)

One of my favorite things to do (and great ways to waste spend time) is enjoying the wonderful world of Etsy. It still surprises me how many times I have mentioned Etsy to someone and they had no idea what I was talking about. So in case you didn’t know, Etsy is

One of the things I LOVE about Etsy is the opportunity it gives artists to have their own business — often from home. Real people with real talent being able to run real businesses. I love it! And there are some AMAZING treasures to uncover. You can spend hours days looking through all the amazing things. In a quick trip through with no real destination in mind, I came across these amazing products (all images are clicakble):

A cool homemade frog mug

This gorgeous sling purse is made by the same lady who makes some AMAZING laptop bags (I have ordered two from her!)

Cotton Candy boutique has this cute bag (and lots more!)

How about a cute handmade outfit for your favorite little pirate?

Or how about an ADORABLE little dress?

You can get hand painted room decor

Or some cool wall decals

Check out these awesome Scrabble Tile Pendants

And page after page of gorgeous jewelry

You can even buy patterns to make your own cool stuff!

You can purchase homemade, custom designed cookies baked fresh!

And you can find cool and unique gifts like this felt purse!

Or if beautiful is more what you are looking for, you can get a hand-sewn quilt (or buy this and send it to me 😉

Whatever you need, want, desire…Etsy has it all. Spend some time enjoying the amazing talent and fresh inspiration. You’ll be glad you did!

We are so excited to share with you the designs of super talented, MICHELINE MARTIN! I have always been a fan of her work. Her soft and sweet colors always make me want to scrap! I just love them all! But before we get into all of that, we need to see what she created for THE DIGI FILES 3!

This set of glitter sprays is so FUN! They come in a bunch of different colors. I love how they can add just an extra something to your page…and they are SO realistic! You can get them, along with a TON of other great stuff in THE DIGI FILES 3. Just $5.00 for so much! Here is a page I did using them (along with a GORGEOUS paper pack of Micheline’s)

My name is Micheline but everyone calls me Mitch, I’m a work at home mom (I currently run my own private daycare in my home), I have 2 sweet kids, Logan who is 4 and Mystaya who is 5. I am married to my high school sweetheart for 6 years now but have been together for 10 years. My first language is French which many people do not know and I currently live in Ontario Canada.

STORE: Micheline Martin Designs

BLOG

Shortly after my son was born I was on my “mommy sites” a few girls would make siggy tags for each other, this interested me very much as I loved how beautiful the papers and elements were, so I started playing around in PSP trying to learn the best I could (I’m self taught) and eventually figured out how to do simple things.

I’ve been designing for 4 years now

I am only a designer. Don’t get me wrong, I have scrapped, but I think I’ve only made a total of 5 layouts

I used to devote Monday-Friday from 7pm-2am working on my digital designing, but found myself to be slowly burning out since I work a full time job as well. So I decided to do the best thing for me and my family and only design 1-2 times a week if that during nap time.

1) Lots of Hugs and Kisses from my kids
2) Movie night Fridays with my hubby
3) gerbera daisy’s
4) playing mario kart wii with my son and letting him win — LOL
5) taking long walks
6) the smell of spring
7) rain in the summertime
8) my big comfy bed after a long day of work
9) baking
10) pepsi

1) fake people
2) people who do not have manners
3) too many commercials during my tv program
4) those yucky sun chips in my party mix chip bag
5) When I need to restart my computer and it freezes during the re-boot (did I mention it’s not an old computer)
6) When you’re on the phone and you’re on hold and they put that annoying elevator music on
7) Elevators that have glass walls (not everyone wants to be able to see how high you’re going)
8) Huge lineups
9) When my children hide the remote
10) bickering and whining from my children

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And now let’s take a peek at Micheline’s store…so many amazing things inside! I think we need to convince her to keep designing (she is in semi-retirement)

Micheline also has some great designer resources available (like the crunch time template above). She also has these:

Make sure you check out Micheline’s store for these and many other great products. She has some great stuff retiring March 31st and many of them are just $1! And add that to the fact that Micheline is offering 30% OFF all her stuff for THE DAILY DIGI readers(dailydigienjoy30 expires April 15th and can only be used once per customer) you can grab some AMAZING deals!

Thank you SO MUCH, Micheline, for being with us this month at THE DAILY DIGI. Your work is so beautiful (as is your commitment to your family). We hope that you can find the balance and keep designing. We love what you do!

One of the hard parts of living in a developing nation is that some things that are “guaranteed” in the States are definitely NOT guaranteed here. So, while I am stuck with internet that is down all over my town (can’t load any images, etc) you can enjoy a few other sites that provide great information and inspiration. Hopefully I will be back online tomorrow.

Gallery Standouts has some great inspiration — full of great, eye-catching layouts from around the digi world.

Simple Scrapper has great tips about anything and everything…all geared towards digital scrappers

Hummie’s World is a great site full of tutorials, challenges, information, and MORE!

The DIGI DARES are always an awesome place for challenge and inspiration

Scott Kelby is known for his “just tell me how to do it” approach to teaching photography, Photoshop, and computer tips. And although I am not going to use one of his tips today (though I am sure he has some on the issue) I will use his approach. Rather than explain in depth, I will just give you the basics: the what, when, and how. If you want the “why?”, do a google search on sharpening images for the web. I will throw in some examples, though 😉

WHAT: Images that are resized and posted to the web get “softened” in the process. In order to make them look like they would in real life/full size, you need to sharpen them for the web.

WHEN: Whenever you post something on the web

HOW: I have looked at many, many instructions and actions for sharpening for web and I always come back to these settings. I don’t know if I got them somewhere or if I fiddled with numbers to get here. But since I am NOT a “fiddle with every picture/layout individually” kind of gal, these are the BEST settings I have found that will work on all images.

Just one step: AFTER you have resized your image for web, run and unsharp mask with these settings:

The results are pretty great. Posting images to the web softens them and this is just the right amount to show others how great they look in real life!

NO SHARPENING ADDED

WITH SHARPENING

NO SHARPENING ADDED

WITH SHARPENING

One simple step make can a HUGE difference!

P.S. For those of you who created a LO this past weekend from our THE WRITE WAY post, be looking in your inbox for a GREAT coupon!

I love making hybrid decor for my home! Last summer I made a shadow box calendar that I loved and I decided to use the shadow box idea again for some Spring decor.

I had some shadow box frames on hand from a clearance sale at Target a while back (I have seen them at craft stores as well).

1) I made my 8×8 canvas in Photoshop and used some of my favorite spring goodies from The Digi Files 3 leaving room at the bottom for some flowers. That googly birdie just makes me happy!

2) I printed this at home on HP Premium Brochure Paper (matte finish). I added my flowers and brads (two of my very favorite paper scrapping goodies).

3) Lastly, I put the finished project in the frame and ta-da…a great piece of artwork to bring in SPRING!

As I was cruising the galleries tonight looking for some hybrid projects for an upcoming post, I found this really CUTE project by Cindyg that was similar to mine and just had to share it with all of you! I love how she curled the rays on the sunshine! (click the image for full credits).

P.S. Yin is having a sale on her fabulous templates!! Be sure to check it out!

When I first opening THE DAILY DIGI and was thinking about who to ask to be sponsors, Franziska Altmann was one of the first I thought of. I didn’t really know her at all (other than that we were both at SBG) but I was in love with her designs. I am a sucker for a great preview (note to all designers: you previews sell your designs so make them good) and Ziska has great previews. Even more that, though, is that when you open the kit you find that the inside of the kit lived up to its preview (second note to designers — if the preview is the only good thing about your kit, customers will nont come back.) Her designs or gorgeous and full of unique items. I can’t wait to show you some of my favorite things. But of course, we have some other things to do first! Let’s see what she made especially for THE DIGI FILES 3.

Isn’t this kit SO CUTE? I am not usually into themed kits but this one was just so adorable! I can’t wait for my next time to teach Sunday School either — those sheep are going to be PERFECT for the unit they are working on! In the meantime, here is a page I made (image is clickable for full credits)

My name is Franziska Altmann and am from Dresden Germany. I’m Mom to a two year old girl Charlotte, and I live together with her father, my boyfriend Jan.

I was scrapping pages for my daughter’s yearbook with a small budget, so I started tweaking stuff, and making elements and papers on my own. I had my daughter while I was studying to become a landscape architect. I was familiar with Photoshop and Illustrator, so making a baby book got me addicted to digital scrapbooking. After finishing my dissertation, I decided to be a stay at home mom for a while and selling digital scrapbook items was a nice way to earn the money to buy me more scrapping supplies.

I started to give away freebies on my blog from the very beginning. It took a while before the idea of selling hit my mind. I joined the Sunshine Girls for a freebie extravaganza in November 2007. However, it took a couple of months until I was ready to start selling my designs in May 2008, because I wanted to finish my dissertation first.

I think I’m both, even though I stopped uploading images to my online galleries. I love creating little hybrid gifts for my family. But I’m way behind on our yearbooks and vacation albums because I focus more on designing right now.

It depends, I have the rule of no computer time while my daughter is with me, so my designing time is limited to the times she is asleep or at daycare. I would guess it is about 6 hours on weekdays, and a bit less on the weekend. It is really hard to divide between computer work time and computer playtime.

Ocean Cloud of my kits alone, but there are lots of collab’s I love!

This is my latest and right now favorite collab (this changes with me creating them)

Not everybody likes fractions. I remember being in school and hearing the complaints. I also remember teachers that didn’t explain them well. I also know of many adults who claim they just hated them growing up. However, like many things in life that we don’t like, fractions are a part of our everyday life. They come into our lives on a regular basis — cutting a pie so that everyone gets a piece, doubling a recipe so you have some to share, figuring out where to stop for the night so your road trip is evenly broken up into three days. All around us, fractions come back from our elementary classrooms to haunt us. Maybe we should have listened to our teacher when her answer to our question, “When am I EVER going to use this?” was “every day!”

Even in the world of photography and scrapbooking, fractions are a part of what we do. One of the oldest and most widely used compositional techniques is called, “THE RULE OF THIRDS.” The “rule” dates all the way back to 1797 where is was given as a rule when proportioning paintings. The rule states that in an image should be imagined as having two equally spaced horizontal lines and two equally spaced vertical lines. Important features/elements should be placed along one of the intersecting points of these lines. This placement of important aspects of the image creates energy, interest, and tension. Research has shown that these intersections are a more natural place for our eyes to fall, making the image easier (and therefore more pleasant) to look at.

As photographers and scrappers, this is a very important rule to keep in mind. The very nature of art (of which photography and scrapping are a part) is to encourage people to look at something. In doing so, we want to create an experience that is pleasant and conveys the message we are trying to send. By understanding this rule (and later knowing how, when, and why to break it) you can more effectively communicate feeling and emotion to your viewers. Take a look through magazines, photojournals, and books and you will see photo after photo that applies this principle.

Let’s look at a few images to understand the concept better.

In this photo you can see that the young lady’s eye falls on one of the intersections. In portrait photography, you want the viewer to be drawn to the eyes. By placing the eye(s) along one of the intersecting points, it aids as a natural guide for the view to know where to look, where to be drawn in.

In this photo, there are multiple subjects. But as you can see, all of their eyes run along the plane of the top third of the photo.

One of the great things about digital photography and photo editing programs is the ability to crop after-the-fact. I tend to frame shots in-camera the way I want them but I know many photographers who take a lot more in the frame then they will end up with, allowing them great freedom to crop and try different things. Here is an example of a photo I cropped using the rule of thirds.

It is a photo from about a year ago of me with my oldest daughter. It’s a nice photo. It isn’t too horribly centered but it is still a little stagnant and “dry.” In order to give it a little life, I re-cropped it using the rule of thirds:

The principle also applies to landscrapes. Our natural inclination when taking photos is to put the horizon in the middle. But this creates a boring a lifeless picture that is “chopped” in half. For example, look at this photo I took off of our balcony:

And here it is recropped

If you want to see some more great information on cropping and what it can do for a photo, check out THIS article from Pioneer Woman (written by Jodi Friedman of MCP Actions).

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The rule of thirds can also apply to scrapbooking. If knowing where to place things on your page leaves you frustrated and confused, you can use this principle to help get your started. Out of curiosity, I looked at some of the layouts that we have posted on THE DAILY DIGI before. I wanted to see if layouts that picked out for other reasons (often because “they jumped out at me”) followed this principle. Sure enough, some of my favorite layouts drew me in with a simple principle at work. Look at what I found…

In all of these you can see how the main parts of the pages were aligned on one of the intersection points/lines. This creates a page that invites the viewer in and stay a bit longer. Interest and energy are gained by something so simple.

So there you have it…even if you didn’t like fractions in school, they are here to stay. Might as well embrace them 😉

Just a warning…today’s The UNdigi (and the accompanying videos) is a little heavy and is not suitable for children. But you should really, really read it.

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Did you know that it is estimated that EVERY 2 MINUTES a child in the world is sold into slavery (labor or sexual)?

Did you know that UNICEF estimates that there are 1.2 million children are trafficked every year?

Did you know that it is estimated that there are currently 27 million people enslaved around the world?

Did you know that human traifficking brings in 32 billion dollars a year (making it the 2nd most lucrative crime in the world)?

Did you know that there are people and organizations doing something about it?

Love146 is an organization I am just becoming familiar with. They work in prevention and aftercare of children enslaved in sexual exploitation. They are passionate to spread a message and to be involved — with their heart, their time, and their money. They want people to understand and to imagine…

I live in South East Asia where these issues surround us. However, you don’t have to live near it in order to hate it and to be involved. Let the outrage sink in. Determine in your heart to be part of the solution. Don’t just sit back with your TV lineup and Starbucks coffee and think it doesn’t matter. It does.

And be watching for ways for the digi community to be involved. Let us use our love of scrapping to fan the flame of action. THE DAILY DIGI wants to be part of it.